From: Marks Motivation Mail <motivation@chattertonworld.com>
Date: Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 6:24 AM
Subject: Whose Success
To:
Whose Success Are You Searching For?
Redefine your idea of success before it's too late.
This pioneering project received global acclaim, and most results were truly uplifting. However, a disturbing theme emerged early in our research that has haunted me to this day. In one assignment, our 20 initial subjects were asked to chart the highs and lows of their life on a single sheet of graph paper. We asked them to draw a line across the center and then map a line above and below for all the years of their lives, much as you might chart a stock price. Above the line were periods when they enjoyed their lives; below the line were periods when life didn' t measure up to their expectations. (You might try this exercise!)
To our surprise, by their own judgment, several of them had lived vast parts of their lives below what I'll now call the success line. For example, Herb, 81, told us, sure, there were great moments, but overall his life had been a colossal disappointment. He hadn't loved his job, though he'd stayed with it for decades. His long marriage was OK, but he felt he had let his true love get away when he was a young man.
His life had been wasted in many ways, he realized, and it was too late to do anything about it. Herb said that if he had it to do over, he would have focused far more on the people who mattered to him. He would have switched careers to something that would have challenged and stimulated him more. He would have taken more risks and pursued his passions.
Overall, the participants' peak moments revealed a pattern. They tended to cluster around three types of success—rich personal relationships, accomplishment or personal growth of almost any kind, and activities that transcended their own self-indulgences and made them feel their lives had meaning.
Rather than waiting until we're too old to do anything about it, perhaps it's time to rethink the rules of success. We need to be feeling, talking and thinking again about what's really important in our lives. We've become so taken by the lifestyles of the rich and famous (and often foolish) that we've lost a little bit of what really matters and truly satisfies in life.
As a young adult, we generally begin to define success by position, wealth or power. We are practically bred to embrace the model of measuring success from the outside-in. The reality, though, is that you must decide for yourself what defines success for you. If you rate yourself against someone else's definition, you will never know the kind of success that truly matters.
More is not necessarily better when it comes to enjoying life and feeling satisfied. More may be more, but it is never enough. We're caught up in the myth that by achieving and going up the ladder and having more stuff, we'll feel full inside. Yet it isn't necessarily so.
Perhaps the concept of success needs an overhaul for the next chapter of our lives. Maybe it shouldn't be primarily about money and advancement; maybe it should also be about personal growth, loving relationships, genuine happiness, purpose in work and a contribution to the greater good. S
Ken Dychtwald is a psychologist, gerontologist, successful entrepreneur, business consultant and the author of 16 books, including With Purpose: Going from Success to Significance in Work and Life by Ken Dychtwald, Ph.D., and Daniel J. Kadlec (Collins Life, March 2009), from which this column has been adapted.
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